Approach Clinic: Not a Real Alternate?

Several months back reader Jim Gibertoni in Alaska forwarded me a letter he wrote to the FAA administrator, Randy Babbit. Heres a line from that letter: My question is simple: How does one FAA Part 91 pilot in Fairbanks, Alaska, get the attention of the FAA before the next crash happens in Fairbanks?

jwanwest

Tuesday, September 30, 2014 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

Fairbanks, AK, often lacks viable IFR alternate airports, particularly when its primary alternate (Nenana) is affected by weather or TFRs, forcing aircraft to divert hundreds of miles in challenging conditions.
The FAA explicitly prohibits civilian use of Allen Army Airfield as an alternate due to military operations, despite its potential weather advantages and published approaches, though it would accept genuine emergencies.
The article highlights a discrepancy where an airport might technically meet alternate criteria but be practically unusable due to specific prohibitions, emphasizing the gap between regulation and real-world applicability.
Pilots are cautioned that choosing an alternate requires ensuring its practical usability in an actual emergency, sometimes necessitating actions like declaring a fuel emergency to land at otherwise restricted airfields.

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Several months back reader Jim Gibertoni in Alaska forwarded me a letter he wrote to the FAA administrator, Randy Babbit. Here’s a line from that letter: “My question is simple: How does one FAA Part 91 pilot in Fairbanks, Alaska, get the attention of the FAA before the next crash happens in Fairbanks?”

According to Gibertoni, Fairbanks has one viable alternate for many aircraft. That’s Nenana airport, about 30 miles southwest. Everything else is simply out of range without carrying so much extra fuel as to be impractical or impossible. On the summer day in question, a TFR for fire fighting popped up and cut off Nenana, effectively leaving Fairbanks with no viable alternate for IFR traffic.